Darkness on the Edge of Town (39 page)

He wasn’t prepared for what Galaz did next.

Mickey watched in horror as Galaz raped and strangled Julie Marr. When she wouldn’t die, he stabbed her repeatedly with a knife he produced from his windbreaker.

He should have said something, but his voice was weightless, silent.

This time, they buried Julie Marr under the mesquite tree, digging a shallow grave in the caliche and rocky ground, piling up rocks to keep the animals away.

Mickey was scared. 

Mike always knew what to do, though, and he already had a plan.  Jay Ramsey, Mike told him, should never know that they’d found Julie Marr alive. Jay came from money and Mike Galaz saw an opportunity for blackmail, a way to control Jay Ramsey and his money.

Don’t even think about going to the police, Galaz told him.  you’re as guilty as I am. We’re bound together forever the three of us. You, me and Jay.

It was the first of many times Mickey would keep his mouth shut.

The pact Mike Galaz and Mickey Harmon made that night lasted until the summer of this year, ending with Mike Galaz’s death in a warehouse fire.

In the aftermath of the fire, Mickey Harmon, cuffed and shackled, led the Tucson Police Department to Julie Marr’s remains.  Retired detective Barry Fruchtendler was there to watch as the girl’s bones were unearthed from their shallow grave.

After eighteen years, Julie Marr was finally going home.

Because of the mineral show, which he had not expected, Bobby Burdette had to stay in a little hole-in-the-wall called the Mercury Motel.  The Mercury Motel had a pool full of screaming kids and a plate-glass office that arrowed out toward the street in a triangle—the kind of space-age dump the Jetsons would have stayed in.  The motel sign, a thermometer, lit up at night: Red neon mercury climbing up to the boiling point over and over again. 

At least that wasn’t a lie; even in September, it was ninety degrees after the sun went down.

The Mercury Motel was situated between a defunct filling station and a date palm orchard.  The dates fell over the fence into the parking lot and onto the wax finish of his classic Dodge Challenger—The Mean Green—and got picked up by peoples’ shoes.  At any given moment there were a half-dozen of them littering the walkway in front of the motel rooms like squashed cockroaches.

Bobby told himself he didn’t have to put up with the poor accommodations and the sickening smell of dates much longer.  If things worked out the way he expected, he’d never have to stay in a shithole like this again.

There was a good side to Pahrump, though, one he hadn’t considered  when he blew into town earlier today.  For one thing, the plate-glass office had nickel slots.

And, the town had a whore house.

And, it was legal.  It was called The Bambi Ranch.

Bobby planned to bag one of those bambies. 

He’d seen it on a cable show once, how the girls would parade into the parlor and line up—blondes, brunettes, redheads, wearing different outfits—and you could pick the one you wanted just like at Red Lobster.  There was something about it that just got to him, somewhere deep. Like that feeling you get in your gut when you ride a roller coaster.    

The sun was going down below the far mountains when he drove The Mean Green out of the Mercury Motel parking lot, the sun flash-bulbing him in the eyeballs.  For such a little town, the traffic in Pahrump was hellish; mostly crawling RVs with satellite dishes on their roofs, the street lined with booths and a herd of people on the sidewalks, sometimes walking right out in front of him. 

For a minute he wondered if The Mean Green was the right car to be seen in.  The lime green paint and chrome wheels weren’t exactly camouflage.  But everyone was so busy looking at cases full of minerals or watching their own feet they probably wouldn’t notice a circus driving through.

Besides, he liked how ballsy it was—hiding in plain sight.

The Bambi Ranch was out of town; he knew that was a requirement of all legal brothels in Nevada.  He was surprised at the size of the layout—there were five narrow buildings, like temporary offices they had at schools, only this was no school.  All of them were painted lavender.  As he drove over the cattle guard into the parking area, he noticed an air strip to his right, the windsock sticking straight out like a condom.  There was also a satellite dish on a balding bermuda lawn surrounded by a white picket fence.

The place was lit up like a Christmas tree.  Tiny white bulbs strung up in the Aleppo pines, colored lights all over the front office, and not the kind you got at K-Mart, either—these were professional quality, the kind you’d find on the front of the casinos in Vegas. All that light power on these little sorry buildings.  Like the crown jewels on a ten-dollar hooker.

He’d wanted to savor the event but it didn’t turn out that way. The women outnumbered the men, and they sure didn’t line up like he’d expected. More like they converged on him like sharks on chum. 

“You want me, don’t ya sweetness?” A handsome woman in her thirties said, practically getting him in a half-nelson.  She smelled of heavy perfume, breathmints and gin, but her skin was smooth and her boobs were huge. 

Another one said, “With me you buy one, you get one free.  Redeemable any time.”  This chick was younger, with black hair and purple lips.  Pale as a fish’s belly.

Then there was the brooding Russian woman who tried to smile. At least he thought she was Russian. Pale, washed out, sad.  Most of them, though, they flounced and strutted and ran their fingers through his hair. When the door opened and another man came in, three of them made a beeline for him.  They reminded him of the catfish he used to feed as a kid at Lake Mead: boiling up the water, their mouths avid. 

The one who remained was the young chick.  She had a stud in her eyebrow and looked kind of skeletal, but her skin was like cream.  And she didn’t reek of booze like the older ones.  She caught his look and nodded to the menu on an easel near the counter—a list of services and their prices, all nicely written up in fancy calligraphy on  white posterboard.  He opted for basic cable, so to speak, and paid the bored little man behind the counter in cash.

The Goth girl motioned him to follow her.  She led him outside into the warm night, across the cracked walkway to the first trailer, down a hallway to a small dark room, paneled with walnut veneer.

The minute they got through the door, she removed her clothes.  If you blinked, you missed it.  She had on boots that zipped up the insides and a flimsy skirt with an elastic waist band.  Zip, zip, and the boots were off, and then she shimmied out of the skirt and her bottom half was naked as a jaybird.  She clasped her arms around his neck and pulled him down on the bed without a word. 

It wasn’t as fun as he thought it would be.  In fact, he found his mind drifting, thinking about tomorrow and all the days after that.  Playing it out in his head.  He seemed to hear her from a distance, moaning and groaning, doing her level best to get him to finish up.

But he wasn’t into it. It wasn’t anywhere near as exciting—as dirty—as he had expected it to be. The whole idea had been huge in his mind, but this—this was paltry.  And so his mind wandered to something he saw on the road on the way up here today: An abandoned airplane hangar baking in the desert sun.  The Goth woman whimpered about how good he was—he noticed she worked herself into more of a lather the longer it took, like jockeys whaling on their horses as they neared the wire—but his mind was on the checkpoint trailer at the California border, the two Homeland Security agents in their protective vests and their dark clothing, the sun bouncing off their sunglasses, the big German shepherd between them. 

He liked their look.  Easy enough to approximate.  All he needed was a haircut and the right kind of sunglasses.

“Oh—my—GOD!”

Bobby wondered if he should fake it (like his girlfriend did), or just quit. But he was stubborn; he wanted his money’s worth. So he decided to put his mind to it, and with intense concentration, managed to put it over the top, just as the egg timer by the side of the bed rang. 

It was the hardest work he’d done all day. 

Feeling good about getting it done, he said, “How was that, sweetness?”

“Oh, it was great.”

The way she said it made him want to slap her.  That tone in her voice. He’d heard that tone all his life, and every time it said he wasn’t worth talking to or listening to or even lying to.  The way women could put you down just by the inflection. 

Just once, he’d like to see something on a woman’s face besides contempt, disappointment, greed, or want.

“The tip jar’s over there,” Goth said.

For a moment he saw himself picking up the jar and tossing it into the mirrored closet doors, but then he remembered that he shouldn’t do anything memorable.  He had to think about the big picture.  He wanted to be like those two agents—anonymous in their dark glasses and their clipped haircuts. 

He put a dollar in her jar and said, “Sorry to overtip you, but I don’t have any loose change.”

She slammed the door after him with her foot.

The Mean Green sat patiently outside, his only friend.  

Well, his girlfriend thought she was his friend.  She thought she was more than that.  But the more she loved him, the less he felt like loving her.  Human nature was funny that way.  It had always been like that with him.   He knew it, but still he kept digging himself into these holes.  Now he was going to meet her in Vegas, and he knew what was coming.  All these wedding chapels going to waste.

He had other plans for his life. 

His mother would have socked him one for even thinking that.  Her favorite expression was “Don’t blow your own horn”.  But ever since he was a little kid, he was certain he’d make a name for himself.  Sure, if you looked at it from the outside, if you were a stranger, you wouldn’t think much of that prediction.  But he was just getting started. 

He cruised back down the highway through the warm velvet dark, The Mean Green’s windows open.  Singing along with a Little Feat CD, shouting the lyrics into the desert air:  “When the Feats are on the box, the speed just slips away, I start to sing along, tap my toe and slap the dash in time.”

The ranger in the song who stopped the car telling the guy:
Son, those Feats done steered you wrong this time
.  Easy to get steered wrong; life surely was a slippery slope.  He himself had spent most of the second half of his life trying to get out of the trouble he caused for himself in the first half.

But when God blew through your soul and told you it was
your
time—you heard it.  And if you were any kind of man at all, you did something about it.

Back in Pahrump, he hit the slots at the casino. Thinking of all the people on the street and in this place. Wondering: Did they know how it could all change for them in an instant?  Did they have any concept of God’s stern and unyielding judgment coming for them, rolling down the highway?

More than likely, they had their blinders on, like everybody else on the planet.  Looking around at the people here filling their time, throwing their money away with both hands, he knew that was true.  All most people did was try to get from one hour to the next.

Bobby quit while he was slightly ahead and went back to his room.  Looked at his maps, thought about what he’d do the next day.  Scouting, mostly.  And planning.

He thought about Death Valley just across the line—how appropriate was
that
?  And the desolate stretch of road, the airplane hanger rotting in the sun, stark against the desert brush—noticeable and unnoticeable at the same time. And he, Bobby Burdette, looking cool and tough in his dark glasses.